Oldport Days | Page 5

early dawn, and by day they perhaps lie about
on the rocks, or sit upon one heel beside a fish-house door. I knew a
missionary who resigned his post at the Isles of Shoals because it was
impossible to keep the Sunday worshippers from lying at full length on
the seats. Our boatmen have the same habit, and there is a certain
dreaminess about them, in whatever posture. Indeed, they remind one
quite closely of the German boatman in Uhland, who carried his
reveries so far as to accept three fees from one passenger.
But the truth is, that in Oldport we all incline to the attitude of repose.
Now and then a man comes here, from farther east, with the New
England fever in his blood, and with a pestilent desire to do something.
You hear of him, presently, proposing that the Town Hall should be
repainted. Opposition would require too much effort, and the thing is
done. But the Gulf Stream soon takes its revenge on the intruder, and
gradually repaints him also, with its own soft and mellow tints. In a few
years he would no more bestir himself to fight for a change than to
fight against it.
It makes us smile a little, therefore, to observe that universal delusion
among the summer visitors, that we spend all winter in active
preparations for next season. Not so; we all devote it solely to
meditations on the season past. I observe that nobody in Oldport ever
believes in any coming summer. Perhaps the tide is turned, we think,
and people will go somewhere else. You do not find us altering our
houses in December, or building out new piazzas even in March. We
wait till the people have actually come to occupy them. The preparation
for visitors is made after the visitors have arrived. This may not be the
way in which things are done in what are called "smart business
places." But it is our way in Oldport.
It is another delusion to suppose that we are bored by this long epoch of

inactivity. Not at all; we enjoy it. If you enter a shop in winter, you will
find everybody rejoiced to see you--as a friend; but if it turns out that
you have come as a customer, people will look a little disappointed. It
is rather inconsiderate of you to make such demands out of season.
Winter is not exactly the time for that sort of thing. It seems rather to
violate the conditions of the truce. Could you not postpone the affair till
next July? Every country has its customs; I observe that in some places,
New York for instance, the shopkeepers seem rather to enjoy a
"field-day" when the sun and the customers are out. In Oldport, on the
contrary, men's spirits droop at such times, and they go through their
business sadly. They force themselves to it during the summer,
perhaps,--for one must make some sacrifices,--but in winter it is
inappropriate as strawberries and cream.
The same spirit of repose pervades the streets. Nobody ever looks in a
hurry, or as if an hour's delay would affect the thing in hand. The
nearest approach to a mob is when some stranger, thinking himself late
for the train (as if the thing were possible), is tempted to run a few steps
along the sidewalk. On such an occasion I have seen doors open, and
heads thrust out. But ordinarily even the physicians drive slowly, as if
they wished to disguise their profession, or to soothe the nerves of
some patient who may be gazing from a window.
Yet they are not to be censured, since Death, their antagonist, here
drives slowly too. The number of the aged among us is surprising, and
explains some phenomena otherwise strange. You will notice, for
instance, that there are no posts before the houses in Oldport to which
horses may be tied. Fashionable visitors might infer that every horse is
supposed to be attended by a groom. Yet the tradition is, that there
were once as many posts here as elsewhere, but that they were removed
to get rid of the multitude of old men who leaned all day against them.
It obstructed the passing. And these aged citizens, while permitted to
linger at their posts, were gossiping about men still older, in earthly or
heavenly habitations, and the sensation of longevity went on
accumulating indefinitely in their talk. Their very disputes had a flavor
of antiquity, and involved the reputation of female relatives to the third
or fourth generation. An old fisherman testified in our Police Court, the
other day, in narrating the progress of a street quarrel; "Then I called
him 'Polly Garter,'--that's his grandmother; and he called me 'Susy

Reynolds,'--that's my aunt that's dead and